Archive for the ‘The Lighter Side’ Category

Reuters reported that the European Union is considering applying 25 percent tariffs on American motorcycles, bourbon and blue jeans, if President Trump imposes new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Hmmm. Harley-Davidsons are made in—what? Wisconsin, right? In Menomonee Falls, actually, about 50 miles from Janesville, where Paul Ryan lives. The Jim Beam bourbon distillery is in Clermont, Kentucky, about 20 miles from Mitch McConnell’s house in Louisville. Levi’s is headquartered in San Francisco, about two miles from Nancy Pelosi’s house.

The only things I know about how to tell a joke is to pause before I state the punch line, and to emphasize the words in the punch line that are the point of the joke. But there’s a lot more to it, as this analysis of a Louis CK joke shows.

Some 35 years ago, there was an International Dull Men’s Club whose chairman was J.D. Stewart, a statistical analyst for Eastman Kodak Co. here in Rochester, New York.

That was in 1982, a year of peak dullness and boring prosperity for both Rochester and Kodak. Since then Kodak has gone bankrupt, which has made life around here more “interesting” in the sense of the ancient Chinese curse.

The club was formed largely as a joke, but with an underlying idea of honoring people who enjoy mundane things and who do mundane but necessary work.

Stewart would do things like publishing a list of the 10 dullest Americans (including Don Rickles, Gerald Ford, Lawrence Welk, Walter Mondale, Fred Rogers and Garfield the cat) and proposing seminars on topics such as “dressing to break even” and “non-assertiveness sensitivity training”.

The video above shows how the Dull Men’s Club concept has been revived in Great Britain. The club blog is devoted to safe excitement, an outstandingly dull concept.

I do have to say that the British devotion to dullness is incomplete. The new Dull Men’s Club is devoted to unusual hobbies, some of which seem actually interesting.

There is a woman whose hobby is to follow brown road signs, wherever they might take her. That could lead to actual adventures, which is contrary to the spirit of dullness.

It’s a good thing we have photographic evidence of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump being in the same room at the same time.

Otherwise you could really convince me that after a blowout electoral loss on Nov. 8, “Trump” will walk onstage and pull off a rubber Scooby-Doo-type mask to reveal that it was really Bill Clinton all along, acting like the dumbest candidate in the world, just to guarantee that Hillary Clinton got into the White House.

The real Donald Trump is somewhere tied up in a Brooklyn, N.Y., basement, guarded 24-7 by Clinton surrogates, wondering why he’s allowed food and drink but no access to Twitter.

That’s more believable than the idea that out of all of their options, Republicans nominated a Gold Star-family-attacking, non-party-endorsing, baby-kicker-outer to face off against an ethically challenged policy wonk who barely connects to her own party’s base.

In the early days of Donald Trump’s candidacy, I never thought he would get the Republican nomination. I thought he would soon do or say something so offensive and outrageous that his followers would turn against him.

Next day: Donald Trump says or does another shocking and offensive thing.

What Trump manages to do with all this is to keep public attention focused on himself. He says so many shocking and offensive things that it is hard for the ordinary busy person, who has a job and family responsibilities, to keep them straight. What remains is an impression of Trump as a strong person who doesn’t back down.

Hard-core of Trump supporters believe anything and everything he says, including that President Obama is a secret Kenyan-born Muslim socialist and that Muslim sharia law is a real and present danger to the USA. There is no way to convince them of anything different because they are not interested in separating truth from falsehood, and have no criteria for doing so.

Their support is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls anti-fragile. No matter what Trump’s opponents do or don’t do, their faith in him grows stronger.

Another group supports Trump not on his merits, but because they think anything is better than the status quo. The more he outrages established politicians and journalists, the better they like it. The size of this group is a measure of the failure of American government during the past 15 or so years.

By the standards of the past, Trump would have been a fringe candidate, as would Bernie Sanders. Their strong showings are due less to their own qualities than to the discontent of the American public. I don’t think Trump supporters’ will cease to be angry at the status quo because Trump makes disrespectful remarks about a Muslim Gold Star mother.

Martin Molin, of the Swedish band Wintergatan, built this machine, which uses 2,000 marbles to make music. It looks like an Animatron video, but it is real. It is made out of manually-operated levers, pulleys and wheels, mostly wood but including some Lego parts.

I set out ant and roach traps, but I never interfere with spiders, except maybe to brush away an overly conspicuous cobweb. Spiders catch and eat bugs I want to get rid of, so why should I treat them as nuisances. It would be as foolish the United States government picking fights with countries that are fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The other day I chanced to meetan angry man upon the street —a man of wrath, a man of war,a man who truculently boreover his shoulder, like a lance.a banner labeled “Tolerance.”

And when I asked him why he strodethus scowling down the human road,scowling, he answered, “I am hewho champions total liberty—intolerance being, ma’am, a stateno tolerant man can tolerate.

“When I meet rogues,” he cried, “who chooseto cherish oppositional views,lady, like this, and in this manner,I lay about me with this bannertill they cry mercy, ma’am.” His blowsrained proudly on prospective foes.

Fearful, I turned and left him therestill muttering, as he thrashed the air,“Let the intolerant beware!”